Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/201

 At the ensuing election, however, they succeeded in securing a bare majority; and public education in Birmingham was "secularized" at a blow. Since then, alas! there has been a certain retrogression.

The board, which consists of fifteen members, is subdivided into five committees,—Finance, Education and School Management, Sites and Buildings, General Purposes, and Night Schools; and it requires no small amount of skilful manipulation to supply each of these with a Liberal chairman. Mr. Dale has acted as chairman of the hardest-worked of all the committees; viz.. Education and School Management. He is, moreover, under the new government scheme for the better conduct of the grammar-school with its large revenues, a governor; having been appointed to that honorable office by the University of London. But, though the School Board of Birmingham has discharged its duties with exemplary efficiency Mr. Dale is opposed, on principle, to the multiplication of such authorities. He would strengthen the local parliament, the Birmingham Town Council, and place every civic interest in its keeping. The corporation already manages the gas and water supplies, and Mr. Dale would not shrink from charging it with the control of education and of the liquor traffic as well. I cannot but think he is right. Every thing that tends to fritter away the authority and dignity of our municipalities is an injury to the public spirit of a community, and there is no surer mode of bringing about a result so undesirable than the senseless multiplication of local boards. It is the latest application of one of the most ancient maxims of tyranny, Divide et impera.

There is neither inside nor outside Parliament a more